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Some of the objects found in this section speak to life before the city was founded, reminding us that our history did not begin just 250 years ago; others speak to how we live today. Some were used for work; others were used for play. Some were used by important leaders; others were used by people whose names have been lost to history.

Artifacts—often called “the real stuff” of history—are important because they are what remains of the past and are what we will leave future generations to help tell the stories of our time. Machines, clothes, documents, tools, and toys may look simple at first glance, but they also can serve as keys to our shared past.

Baby Teeth

These tiny baby teeth helped St. Louis citizens win a great battle in the fight to reduce nuclear testing. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet governments discharged nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, where radioactivity was widely dispersed with each explosion.

Teeth like this one proved that such tests had to stop. Members of the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information knew that nuclear radiation caused genetic birth defects and diseases like cancer and wanted to demonstrate that airborne radiation could travel great distances. To do so, they began collecting baby teeth in 1959 to measure them for the dangerous radioactive isotope strontium-90, which occurs only as a result of nuclear reactions. The program’s director, Dr. Louise Reiss, encouraged parents to contribute their children’s baby teeth for testing.

The program collected about 320,000 teeth. Tests showed that the strontium-90 level in children’s teeth in 1963 was 50 times greater than in 1950—and that the levels rose and fell in correlation with atomic bomb tests. Using this information, President John F. Kennedy signed the international Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963.

Gift of Joe Mangano and the Radiation and Public Health Project

Banner Iron Works Gas Streetlight

The first St. Louis gas streetlight was lit in November 1847, causing a newspaper to proudly proclaim, “as the plume of flame waved in the wind, pleasure shone upon each countenance.” The citizenry had voted to tax themselves for streetlights, as they did for hydrants, sewers, roads, and other civic improvements. Within a decade, more than 1,200 gaslights illuminated “the gloom of our streets.”

By the close of the 19th century, natural gas replaced coal gas, mantles replaced open flames, and old streetlights were torn up and replaced by new ones. This streetlight at Kingshighway Boulevard and Shaw Avenue was one of many stylish posts made by Banner Iron Works in the early 1900s. The anchoring spade end of these 600-pound posts was placed into four-foot-deep holes, tightly rooting them in the earth. Gas was fed through a network of underground pipes and up through the hollow interiors of each post, fueling the two mantles within each blown-glass globe. The Banner foundry also cast sewer manhole covers and stormwater grates. When electrical boxes joined the streetscape, Banner furnished them too. Many gas lampposts were converted to electrical use starting in the 1920s, and replaced by newer fixtures by the 1970s.

Post and light fixture: Gift of David Hoffelder

Globe: Gift of Allan B. Kling

Beaver Taxidermy Mount

For about 200 years, the thick, dark brown, waterproof coats of beavers meant big money. European hatmakers sheared hair from pelts, soaked it in mercury salts, then dyed, felted, and shaped it into high fashion. As a result, beavers were hunted to near extinction on the European continent. In the 1700s, North American trappers were happy to supply beaver pelts, selling thousands annually throughout the century. French fur traders founded St. Louis because they saw a shipping pipeline running rich with beaver pelts, from streams flowing into the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to this community, down to the port of New Orleans, and then 4,000 miles overseas to Old World markets. At first, Native Americans provided the majority of pelts, for which the French traded manufactured goods. Later, Europeans trapped or shot the large water-dwelling rodents themselves, increasing profits by cutting out the Native Americans as middlemen. After about 60 years of unrelenting demand and resultant overhunting, nearly all of the beavers were killed here, too, at about the same time that fashion turned to making hats of silk.

This stuffed and mounted beaver specimen was on display at the History Museum for many years, helping to demonstrate St. Louis’s central role in the fur trade. As a museum teaching aid, it has faded to blonde from its years of use.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Beer Skimmer

This object played a small part in making St. Louis a beer capital of the world. As the city’s German immigrant population increased throughout the 19th century, more breweries sprang up, many of them specializing in lager-style beer. These breweries often had a small, neighborhood-based clientele, distributing beer to local saloons and taverns via horse-drawn wagon.

Eberhard Anheuser, an immigrant soap maker, purchased the local Bavarian Brewery in 1857, and he changed the name to E. Anheuser & Co. in 1860. This copper skimmer is from Anheuser’s brewery. A skimmer like this was a critical piece of production equipment in that day, to help facilitate separation of materials such as grain, hop cones, or even yeast during various stages of the brewing process.

Anheuser’s brewery did not remain local for long. In 1876, Anheuser’s industrious son-in-law, Adolphus Busch, introduced the world to one of its favorite beers—Budweiser. The brewery would go on to produce some of the country’s best-selling beers and to face challenges ranging from Prohibition to changing consumer preferences to corporate takeovers, but none of it would have been possible without Anheuser’s first brewery. This skimmer was there to witness the beginning of it all.

Gift of the Mabel-Ruth Anheuser Trust

Brick Pattern

St. Louis is thought of as a brick city, but that wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until 1849 that brick so thoroughly dominated the city’s construction. In that year, a disastrous fire swept through St. Louis, consuming 23 steamboats and 15 blocks of commercial riverfront businesses. In response, the city’s aldermen passed an ordinance requiring the use of fireproof building materials. Businesses turned to the area’s rich clay deposits to produce red brick, and St. Louis’s reputation as a brick city was established. St. Louis also became a major brick supplier for the entire country.

The Hydraulic Press Brick Company (HPB), which had its start in St. Louis, became the largest brick manufacturer in the nation. HPB’s innovative process made hard and strong bricks with intricate decorative patterns. These bricks provided architects and builders with better, more elegant elements of construction for jambs, arches, bases, cornices, and ornamentation. Starting with carved wooden patterns like this one, plaster casts were made to shape iron molds. Hydraulic machines forced clay into the iron molds, giving the company its name.

By 1904, HPB employed 1,050 St. Louisans, produced 192 million bricks per year, and had yards all over the country. It made some of the best bricks in the nation, a standard by which others were measured.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Stokoe

Browns Uniform

“First in shoes, first in booze, last in the American League.”

This popular description of our city and the hapless St. Louis Browns is a reminder of the time when St. Louis was a two-team town. The Browns were rarely competitive on the field, and off the field, they had to compete with the Cardinals to win the hearts of the city’s baseball fans—another contest they never seemed to win.

The Browns did have some limited success in St. Louis. In 1944, after 42 years in the city, they won their only American League pennant. Unfortunately for the Browns, they faced the Cardinals in the World Series and lost in six games.

The all–St. Louis World Series proved to be a rare high point for the Browns. Owner Bill Veeck often had to resort to publicity stunts to attract spectators. He once brought in a three foot, seven inch pinch hitter with an impossible strike zone. Outfielder Jim Delsing, who wore this uniform between 1950 and 1952, was then brought in to pinch-run for the diminutive hitter. The stunt did not change the Browns’ fortunes, on or off the field. Once Anheuser-Busch purchased the Cardinals, the Browns gave up their dream of cultivating a strong fan base in St. Louis and moved to Baltimore in 1953.

Gift of the St. Louis Browns

Build-A-Bear

The teddy bear is one of the most iconic and storied toys in American history. But over the last few decades, one St. Louis company has changed the way that Americans think about their teddy bears.

One day in the 1990s, Maxine Clark, a successful businesswoman, was on a shopping trip with friends, hunting for the perfect Beanie Baby. Suddenly, an idea struck her. What if, instead of hunting for the perfect toy, children and parents could make their own unique stuffed animals? And with that idea, Build-A-Bear Workshop was born. Clark founded the company in October 1997 and opened the first store at the St. Louis Galleria. In the store, customers went through an individualized process where they chose customizable stuffed animals assembled right in front of them.

Clark’s store proved popular. In a few short years, Build-A-Bear had expanded around the globe, and the company won numerous awards. In recent years, the company has seen some struggles, and the recession has cut into its profits, but its stores can still be found in malls and at attractions all over the world.

Gift of Build-A-Bear Workshop

Bust of Singleton Palmer

St. Louis jazz musician Singleton Palmer began his musical career playing trumpet at Sumner High School. To increase his chances of getting a professional job, he also learned tuba and string bass, the instruments he played for most of his career. Playing in clubs, hotels, and riverboats, and touring with different groups, he caught the attention of Clark Terry, who invited him to join Count Basie’s band. After three years of touring, he returned to St. Louis and formed the Singleton Palmer Dixieland Sextet, which played at the Opera House in Gaslight Square for more than 10 years. After the decline of Gaslight Square, the group played on the Robert E. Lee and Goldenrod showboats.

Throughout Palmer’s career, he supplemented his earnings as a musician with a day job as a maintenance man at Chromalloy American Company, a foundry, manufacturer of protective coatings, and specialist in engine repair. In 1975, his fans at Chromalloy presented him with this bust of himself, “for the 25 years of pleasure you have given us and for a heart as big as your talent.”

Gift of Gloria Palmer Vincent and Alvin Vincent

Ceremonial Lance

The Osage people used this ceremonial lance at a time when they were one of the wealthiest and most powerful Native American tribes west of the Mississippi River. As colonial St. Louis was becoming the center of trade and communication in the region in the late 1700s, the founding family of the Chouteaus and other early French traders relied heavily on the powerful Osage to maintain their peaceful—and profitable—relations with other Native Americans.

This special ceremonial lance employs materials that Europeans and Americans traded for furs: an iron blade, glass beads, brass bells, buttons, and wire. An otter tail is fastened by a beaded strip, while otter fur wraps around and hangs from the wooden shaft. The feathers of a black-tipped eagle and striped great horned owl also adorn it, along with a bear claw and a small tree burl, shaped like a bear or bison. With these pieces attached, the lance conveys power from these animals.

As the United States began to control more western territory, the Osage endured considerable hardship. Forced into treaties in 1808, 1825, and the 1850s, they ceded ancestral lands and moved to northeastern Oklahoma. The Osage nation remains there today, a vital community of about 13,000 members.

Missouri History Museum Collections

CITY Sticker

Roxanne Krummenacher moved to St. Louis City from St. Louis County in 1994 and found herself defending the choice to eyebrow-raising friends and family. “I felt this stereotype from others that didn't already know what a gem it was,” she said, “like it was full of murders and people begging for money…like they needed a bulletproof vest to cross the city boundary line.”

Krummenacher, however, saw history, architecture, diversity, and an enriched lifestyle. She heard that in past decades, city residents’ cars had a licensing sticker, and in 2003 she used that idea to create a St. Louis City sticker designed after the popular three-letter country code stickers seen in Europe. “I wanted people who were proud to live here to know they weren't alone and were a part of a club...and of course, to tell county residents members of this club abound.”

The sticker became a grassroots expression of pride for city dwellers and can now be seen on cars across the area. And while the word CITY is the most visible, it’s the words around the outside of the sticker that speak most directly to Krummenacher’s original idea and to a sentiment felt by many. Those words read, “Proud to Live in St. Louis.”

Missouri History Museum Collections

Corking Machine

When brewer and grocer Adam Lemp introduced the lager of his German homeland to St. Louis in the late 1830s, he made the city one of the first communities outside of Europe to enjoy this unique type of beer. There were many German immigrants among St. Louis’s 36,000 inhabitants, and the city was on the verge of a dramatic increase in population.

By 1870, St. Louis was the nation’s fourth-largest city, with 310,864 residents. As the city boomed, so did Lemp’s brewery. Beer brewing had become one of St. Louis’s major industries, and, under Adam’s son, William, the Lemp Brewery had become the city’s largest, through both demand and innovation. The increased production required new industrial technology, and laborers were consequently compelled to learn new skills in a rapidly industrializing workplace.

This corking machine was from the earlier, simpler era at the brewery, when workers corked bottles one at a time. Straddling the bench, facing the upright panel, a worker would place an open bottle of beer on the round iron plate. He would then use this machine’s lever and foot pedal to press a cork into the bottle’s neck. This corking machine was eventually replaced by more advanced technology developed to meet rising expectations for increased production.

Gift of Edwin Lemp

Cuba Handkerchief Map

From the American Revolution to the Civil War to Vietnam to Afghanistan, St. Louisans have often been called away from home to fight battles both near and far. This map of Cuba comes to us from one such St. Louisan—Martin Scherer, a clerk from St. Louis who joined the 6th Missouri Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War.

In the late 19th century, America went to war with Spain under the pretense of supporting revolution in the Philippines and Cuba, as well as to avenge the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine, which many Americans blamed on the Spanish. Scherer joined the 6th Missouri to fight in the war, but his regiment wasn’t mobilized until after the fighting ended. He arrived in Cuba just before Christmas 1898 as part of the army of occupation. Scherer came away with a unique memento of Cuba: a map drawn in colored pencil on one of his personal handkerchiefs, showing the cities and towns he passed through on his eight-day march. It’s possible he had the map drawn by Herman A. Finke (H. A. F.), a fellow St. Louisan in the company. By May 1899, Scherer was back home. He brought the map home with him, a unique account of one St. Louis soldier’s journey.

Gift of Lorena Scherer

Emerson Silver Swan Fan

Sometimes a gamble on a great idea results in an iconic product. In 1933, Jane Evans was working on the interior design of the St. Louis home of Joseph Newman, incoming director of Emerson Electric Company. Evans pointed out the shortcomings of existing electric fans. She thought a shorter model with a heavier base would be much quieter, and that curved blades like those on boat and airplane propellers would be a better design for moving air. Newman invited her to submit an improved fan prototype.

The resulting fan was modern looking with a sleek aluminum shell covering the working parts. Aluminum was lightweight and functional as well as attractive, and probably inspired the new fan’s name, “Silver Swan.” It was a quick hit, and it became the premier offering in Emerson’s 1934 catalog. Ironically, though the fan resembles an airplane propeller, real airplanes required all available aluminum supplies during World War II and cut short the production of Silver Swan fans.

Newman’s faith in Evans’s design was repaid so handsomely that in Emerson’s centennial corporate history the production of the Silver Swan fan was acknowledged as one of the high points of his career at Emerson. Today it is considered a classic of streamlined industrial design.

Gift of Donald L. Mack

Fleming Shoe-Stitching Machine

St. Louis was home to some of the world’s largest shoe manufacturers in the 20th century. When shoe-making switched over from skilled craftsmanship to factory labor in the late 19th century, New England production dominated in the country, and here in St. Louis imported factory-made shoes began to outsell those made by local craftsmen. By the turn of the century, St. Louis shoe-making had also industrialized, helped by low wages and transportation costs. A notorious system of factories throughout small towns in the Midwest was controlled by a handful of St. Louis–based companies that became increasingly powerful. The city’s International Shoe Company and Brown Shoe Company thrived in the early 1900s, becoming the country’s largest and third largest, respectively.

St. Louis also became a center for manufacturing the machines to make and repair shoes. Champion Shoe Machinery Company, Manufacturers Supplies Company, and Landis Machine Company were some of the local firms that supplied such equipment. Originally specializing in machines for making harnesses, Landis diversified with this Fleming shoe stitcher. Standing at it, a worker could rapidly sew soles, insoles, welts, and uppers together using a curved needle and awl, matching them carefully just as hand workers once did.

Gift of Harry W. Jarvis

Founding of St. Louis Painting

There are no surviving images from the founding of St. Louis in 1764. Probably no one took the time to make a sketch, and of course there was no photography. Almost 100 years later, in the early 1860s, St. Louis artist Carl Wimar planned to depict the founding among other historical scenes in the rotunda of the Old Courthouse. The scenes included Pierre Laclède landing in St. Louis, Hernando de Soto discovering the Mississippi, and Indians attacking the French settlement during the American Revolution. Wimar died before he could complete the project, but his half-brother, August Becker, finished the job and copied the scene of the founding of St. Louis in this painting.

A few details appear to be improbable. The welcoming Indian is wearing a Plains headdress that would not have been worn by local Indians. He brandishes a peace pipe, perhaps prematurely. And the group of Indians has gathered to greet the French boatmen at dawn, an unlikely event. The rising sun and warm greeting were probably intended to be symbolic of the start of a great city.

Gift of Julius S. Walsh Family

Granite Ironware Coffeepot

Granite City, Illinois, owes its name and existence to the manufacture of granite ironware like this coffeepot. The city was founded in 1896 as an industrial estate, comprising both a metal-stamping and enameling works and a town to house the workers.

Just after the Civil War, brothers Frederick and William Niedringhaus founded the St. Louis Stamping Company to shape metalware. In the following decade, they perfected a coating that kept metal from rusting and provided a smooth, easy-to-clean surface. Emigrants headed west from St. Louis bought many products coated with this surface for use in their daily life on the frontier. Later, railroads shipped carloads of granite ironware all over the country.

By the turn of the century the company had restyled itself the National Enameling and Stamping Company (NESCO). Their display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair featured a 30-foot pillar completely covered with attractive arrangements of the firm’s products. Today, the History Museum has a sizable collection of NESCO products, including coffee and tea wares, measuring cups, baking pans, and advertising materials.

Gift of Lee I. Niedringhaus

Hawken Rifle

The St. Louis–produced Hawken rifle has long been an iconic symbol of the American frontier. Fueled by stories that every fur trader, party, or family heading west was outfitted with a Hawken, the rifle reached such a legendary status that its name became synonymous with any plains, mountain, or buffalo rifle. In reality, relatively few Hawken guns were produced, and authentic Hawkens are quite rare.

Jacob Hawken settled in St. Louis in 1818. He learned the gunsmithing trade from his father, and he soon opened up a shop of his own. Within a few years his brother Samuel had joined him, and they started producing a sturdy, hard-hitting percussion rifle. Jacob died in 1849, just as their rifles were reaching new heights of popularity. Samuel continued with the business until his retirement a few years later. The Hawken gun shop then went through several owners before it finally passed into the hands of J. P. Gemmer in the early 1860s. Gemmer, another skilled St. Louis gunmaker, continued to produce first-class rifles in the Hawken style, and for a short period even continued to mark them with the Hawken name. Gemmer maintained the gun shop for many years before retiring in 1915. A year later the shop was dismantled, and one of the most famous firearms businesses in the world closed.

Gift of Julius P. Gemmer

High School Yearbook

“Where did you go to high school?”

This yearbook reminds us of the unique importance that this question—and its answer—holds for St. Louisans. The custom of asking people where they went to high school is one that we often joke about and one that routinely confuses outsiders, but it doesn’t just serve for lighthearted talk. The answer to that question has become one of the primary ways we define each other.

As various immigrant groups to St. Louis formed their own neighborhoods, each took on a different cultural and economic character. For much of the 1900s, neighborhoods kept these distinct personalities. Asking where someone attended high school was a way to find out where they lived and immediately see what kind of occupations, religious beliefs, and cultural norms they were surrounded by while growing up.

For native St. Louisans the question can be a way to connect, uncovering common experiences, or a way to separate, making instant judgments and labeling others as “not my kind.” For newcomers to St. Louis, the question can be a quirky curiosity or a reminder that they are outsiders. Either way, there are no signs that the question will stop being asked anytime soon.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Lafayette-Clark Camp Chest

William Clark would probably have given anything to have had the contents of this traveling chest along with him on his Voyage of Discovery. He was given the chest by none other than the Marquis de Lafayette, but 20 years too late to comfort him during the rigors of travel. The gift instead cemented a bond of friendship between the two men.

Clark welcomed Lafayette to St. Louis in 1825, during his triumphant return tour of the United States. Around fifty years earlier the gallant Frenchman had helped the colonies win their independence from England in the American Revolution. St. Louis marked the farthest western point of his travels, and he stayed less than two full days.

Clark sent Lafayette the gift of a grizzly bear, which ended up in the Paris zoo. This chest may have been a reciprocal gift from Lafayette, likely used during his own travels and then presented to Clark as a token of his high regard. The contents of the chest include items for food preparation and service, personal hygiene and grooming, health care, mending, and writing. They were assembled in a fitted case made by one of the foremost craftsmen of France, who later became goldsmith to Napoleon.

Gift of Stix, Baer and Fuller

Leon Anderson's Cleats

St. Louis is a baseball town, and the Negro League teams that proliferated during the era of segregation are as much a part of the city’s glorious sports history as the storied Cardinals. Great Negro League teams and stars energized the game in St. Louis. But, at a time when African Americans were barred from the major leagues, players pursued the sport more for the love of the game than the promise of fame or fortune.

Leon Anderson was a standout player in segregated baseball, dazzling legions of passionate fans with his deft and colorful play. From the 1920s to the 1940s, he roamed center field for both the St. Louis Sports and the St. Louis Bees. He was known to thrill baseball fans by “sitting down in the outfield, jumping up at the crack of the bat and running down the ball.”

Anderson never had an opportunity to take his considerable talents to the major leagues. When baseball was integrated in 1947, Anderson’s career was near its end. His cleats remind us of a vibrant and exciting sports culture that existed within the confines of African American St. Louis, separate from the brand of play at Sportsman’s Park. But this play was no less rousing, no less spectacular, and no less critical to the city’s reputation as a baseball powerhouse.

Gift of Lorene Shanks

Listerine Bottle

By the late 1800s, St. Louis would grow into one of the largest production centers in the United States. St. Louis’s giant industries, such as brewing, garment manufacture, and aircraft production, are common knowledge, but the city also produced thousands of unusual and unique products. The Hawken Brothers “plains rifle,” liquor dealer Martin Wilkes Heron’s patented Southern Comfort, and Tums antacid were all made in St. Louis. And so was Listerine mouthwash.

Listerine was first marketed by the Lambert Pharmacal Company, whose president Albert Bond Lambert would gain fame as a two-time golf Olympian and the owner of the airplane field that still bears his name. Listerine was first created as a sterilizer for surgical procedures, but failing sales forced it to be marketed as a floor cleaner, gonorrhea cure, and dentist’s sterilizer before it became the country’s first over-the-counter mouthwash in 1915.

Listerine finally saw runaway success in the 1920s with an advertising method that would become widespread: creating fear in consumers. It was pitched as a cure for “chronic halitosis,” better known as bad breath, and ads featured distressed sufferers missing dances, dates, and even marriages. This Listerine bottle dates from the 1930s and was designed to look beautiful alongside perfume bottles and other “essentials” in a woman’s bathroom. The back of the bottle says that it is “for boudoir and travel.”

Gift of Eugene Lehr

Mantel from Forest Park University

Anna Sneed Cairns dedicated her life’s work to women’s education. This mantel, installed in the two schools she founded, was intended to inspire her pupils by example. Arriving in St. Louis as a young woman, she established Kirkwood Seminary and later Forest Park University (on the site of today’s Forest Park Community College). Cairns taught art, including painting on china and wood carving. China painting, considered a female accomplishment, was a source of income for the students at a time when there were few business opportunities available for women. Cairns showcased her own skills by designing and carving panels of the mantel and painting the tiles in an elaborately planned panorama of the vegetation of the four seasons.

The panel under the top cornice is carved with a scene depicting the family’s migration to St. Louis via the Ohio River. According to a family story, the boat holding the Sneed family was caught on a snag, delaying them. This proved a blessing in disguise, as the rest of their party farther ahead was killed by Indians. The motto “whatever is, is right” refers to Anna Sneed Cairns’s belief that her family was saved by divine providence. The shelves surrounding the fireplace provided space for the display of souvenirs as well as many examples of her own and her pupils’ work.

Gift of Douglas A. O’Neill

Mississippian Culture Effigy

St. Louis was not the first major metropolitan area near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Until about 1500, the people we call Mississippians flourished here. Early European settlers called them Mound Builders because they left earthen mounds scattered on both sides of the Mississippi. The largest surviving group is Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, Illinois; that site flourished for about 500 years, serving as the center of Mississippian culture.

This figure was found near Cahokia and was probably used for ceremonial purposes. The man may represent a spirit or god who was central to ritual stories and practices. The effigy could have easily been carried from place to place, perhaps in a bundle with other important objects. A similar bundle was found recently in Moundville, Mississippi, one of the many smaller Mississippian settlements dispersed hundreds of miles in all directions from Cahokia—demonstrating how powerful this culture once was.

Just as little evidence remains about how this figure was used, it is also unclear why the Mississippian culture disappeared before European settlement began. Diet, climate change, disease, and competition may have been factors in the civilization’s decline. But what they left behind serves as an important reminder that the history of our area extends farther back than 250 years.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Missouri Emancipation Proclamation

The border of this certificate depicts symbols of liberty, freedom, and justice, as well as Missouri state symbols. Fittingly, this document was meant to grant liberty, freedom, and justice to all Missourians. In January 1865, the Radical Republican–controlled Missouri Assembly declared all Missouri slaves emancipated, 11 months before the national ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution freed slaves nationally.

All members of the 1865 state general assembly approved the ordinance, but Missouri’s allegiances in the Civil War were divided and the state had only precariously sided with the Union. Missouri slave owners raised legal challenges to the state’s actions, and this, coupled with the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln, marked 1865 as a pivotal and turbulent year in Missouri and American history.

Although this document legally freed enslaved Missourians, former slaves found that many people in the state did not want to grant them their rights. “Slavery dies hard,” wrote a sympathetic white onlooker, describing former slaveholders’ hostile reactions. Bitter at losing their valuable “property” without compensation, many former slave owners had released their slaves with no provisions. What’s more, many white Missourians refused to recognize the new freedoms granted to former slaves. Slavery may have ended, but the long march for equal rights had only just begun.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Monopoly: Here & Now

When the makers of Monopoly wanted to update their game with iconic images of America, it wasn’t surprising to see the Gateway Arch front and center. It didn’t take long for the Arch to become much more than a monument to the nation’s western expansion.

Today it is one of the country’s most recognizable symbols, regularly featured alongside the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Arch appears as a backdrop at important events such as political debates and conventions and is also used on more playful items. For instance, when Matchbox put out a series of 36 cars to represent places around the world, the Arch was included along with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Great Wall of China, and the Alamo. And when Monopoly wanted to create a game in which players could buy and sell some of the most recognizable places in the United States, the Gateway Arch replaced Vermont Avenue.

St. Louisans know that the Arch has a more complex story to tell—its history also includes arguments over land clearance, battles over who was included in its construction, and debates about how to connect it to the city. But even while those discussions continue locally, people around the world mostly view the Arch as one of the city’s and country’s most enduring symbols.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Mortar and Pestle

We know that this mortar and pestle were in the St. Louis area at the time of the city’s founding. They were owned by Dr. André Auguste Condé, a physician at Fort de Chartres on the east side of the Mississippi River. In 1765, he moved across the river to become one of St. Louis’s earliest citizens and its first doctor. He used this brass mortar and iron pestle to grind medicine for early St. Louis citizens.

Though the mortar’s most common usage was in the production of medicine, Condé and other early St. Louis settlers also employed it in more creative ways. When turned over, the mortar could also function as an anvil, a stable surface used for pounding hot metal into shape, and the many dents on this one suggest this use.

Condé was known for his generosity as well as his medical skill, treating patients who could not pay for his services. When Condé died in 1776, more than 200 people owed him money, and it is said that the list of his debtors would be a directory of early St. Louis citizens.

Gift of Kathryn Powell

No. 1 Pumper

Before St. Louis organized and paid its firefighters, men from all walks of life served as volunteers in neighborhood fire-fighting companies. These men donated countless hours to vigorous training and meetings. They also abandoned their own work and leisure activities when the fire bells sounded. The job required strength, bravery, and teamwork.

In operation from the early 1820s until their disbandment in 1859, new volunteer companies formed as St. Louis’s population increased. The volunteer companies were competitive in many ways, sometimes to the detriment of successfully fighting a fire. There was often competition to be the first to secure the closest—and limited—water source.

But they did come together to improve the city. Understanding the danger of the city’s poor water supply and dark, narrow streets, they pushed for change. Their advocacy led to the development of a municipal water system and improvements for city streets, including the installation of gas street lamps.

This hand pumper engine, built in 1836 by Philadelphian John Agnew, belonged to Central Fire Company No. 1. Several veterans found it in 1889 in Mount Olive, Illinois, the last place it was used. The Veteran Volunteer Firemen’s Historical Society brought it back to St. Louis and restored it.

Gift of the Veteran Volunteer Firemen’s Historical Society

Ortez Armoire

According to family history, this wardrobe or armoire was made in the early years of St. Louis from a walnut tree growing in the dense forest that flourished on the riverfront where the Arch stands today. It is the only piece of furniture from French colonial days of which we know the maker. Jean Baptiste Ortes or Ortez (1737–1814) was born in Béarn, France, near the Spanish border, St. Louis co-founder Pierre Laclède’s home region. He came to New Orleans and then to St. Louis with Laclède and stayed here for the rest of his life. In the tiny village that was St. Louis, the woodworking skills Ortes had learned in France were in great demand, for building houses and St. Louis’s first church and for crafting furniture. Armoires (the French word for wardrobes) were used for storing basic household goods, especially textiles, for few houses had closets.

We know the maker’s identity because the armoire was passed down in his family until his great-granddaughter donated it to the History Museum. Ortes may have made it at the time of his marriage in 1782 to Elisabeth Barada (her portrait is on display in the Currents Gallery). Descendants of their daughters still live in the St. Louis area.

Gift of Eulalie Philibert

Owl Pictograph

Many mysteries remain about what the St. Louis area was like before Europeans settled it. This red ocher pictograph of a great horned owl reveals some of them. The owl once graced a limestone bluff 100 feet above the Mississippi River at Alton, Illinois, about 30 miles upstream from St. Louis. We don’t understand what it was meant to convey; with 12 other animal and abstract forms painted around it, the pictograph might have once provided directions, or it may have marked several small Mississippian Indian burial mounds that were found on the bluff above it.

In 1887, self-taught archaeologist and professor William McAdams described this image in his book chronicling many of the pictographs along the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, the site where the owl once looked out upon the river is now gone, destroyed before it could tell us more about its makers. But McAdams’s descriptions prompted others to remove this and other rock symbols in 1905, saving them from oblivion and giving us at least a glimpse into the Mississippian culture that existed long before St. Louis’s founding.

Gift of McMillan Fund

Pig Flask

Pigs, railroads, and liquor. These seem an unlikely combination, but the ties among them are represented in this whimsical pig-shaped flask. Corn, which grew abundantly in the Midwest, was both fed to pigs and made into whiskey. Both pigs and whiskey were shipped by railroads to market.

This unique flask is the product of the imaginations of the Kirkpatrick brothers of Anna Pottery in Anna, Illinois. The brothers produced large quantities of these flasks, individually hand thrown and decorated, for souvenirs or gifts. Some were ordered and distributed by taverns or distilleries. S. J. Lang & Sons, a wholesale liquor dealer located on S. 4th Street in St. Louis, probably ordered this pig in 1888.

The flask also represents St. Louis’s status as a major population center and transportation and shipping hub at the time. The incised railroad map, the Mississippi River running down the pig’s spine, and the Eads Bridge (the only bridge over the Mississippi at the time) tie the flask to St. Louis. The words “St. Louis The Future Great” lettered along the pig’s side express pride in the city and confidence in its growth—the same pride that led energetic city boosters to support a movement to name St. Louis the nation’s capital. However, by the time this flask was made, St. Louis was already falling behind Chicago as a transportation hub.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Poro Pressing Oil Tin

This small pressing-oil tin represents a considerable fortune and an even larger legacy. The Poro line of beauty products was the resultof the hard work of Annie Turnbo Pope Malone, a woman who overcame barriers of race, class, and gender to become, in all probability, the nation’s first female self-made millionaire. Malone began her business in Illinois in 1901, but moved her young company to St. Louis in anticipation of the 1904 World’s Fair. Poro quickly grew to encompass a wide range of beauty preparations and, in the process, brought to Malone untold wealth and national influence.

Annie Malone saw her wealth as a means to advance the economic fortunes of her fellow African Americans. In addition to providing lucrative job opportunities for women of color, she donated more money to African American institutions than any other single black person of her time. Among the beneficiaries were the St. Louis Colored Orphans’ Home, renamed in her honor in 1946, the YMCA and the YWCA, and Howard Medical School. At one time she was reportedly supporting two full-time students in every black land-grant college in the United States.

St. Louis continues to benefit from Malone’s wealth in the work of the Annie Malone Children’s Home. But Malone’s legacy goes deeper in the scores of institutions and individuals that prospered because of her generosity.

Gift of Bonita Cornute

Pride Flag

In 2011, Advocate magazine named St. Louis one of the top 10 gay-friendly cities in the United States, partly because the city boasts one of the largest Pride festivals in the country. St. Louis’s PrideFest occurs the last weekend in June, commemorating the efforts of the Stonewall activists, New Yorkers who protested for gay rights in 1969. In 2013, PrideFest moved downtown for the first time in St. Louis’s history—making it more visible and more recognized by the city at large.

A marker of St. Louis’s status as a gay-friendly city is this special Pride flag section awarded to St. Louis’s Pride organization in 2003. That year, the coordinators of the Key West, Florida, Pride Parade decided to make a huge rainbow flag that would stretch from the Gulf Coast to Key West—a distance of 1.25 miles—to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Pride flag in 1978. After the Key West parade, flag artist Gilbert Baker divided the flag into 250 pieces. He offered Pride organizations around the country a section of the flag if they provided descriptions of their city’s Pride celebration and how they would use their section of the flag. Pride St. Louis representatives promised they would carry it in the next Pride Parade and then donate it to the History Museum to commemorate the occasion. St. Louis received section 21.

Gift of Pride St. Louis, Inc.

Quick Meal Stove

St. Louis earned its nickname Gateway to the West by providing travelers with gear necessary for their journeys and eventual settlement. With the westward spread of railroads, heavy goods could be easily shipped to customers. Stoves were vital for heating homes and cooking food. St. Louisan John Ringen catered to this need, making the career change from a retailer of stoves to a manufacturer.

Although the “Quick Meal” name had been applied to Ringen Company stoves for years, the charming logo of the bird catching a “quick meal” of an insect dates from the early 20th century. By that time, the housewife and mother of the family was often the cook as well. The new home economics movement made cooking seem scientific, a career for women not employed outside the home. Enamel coating on stoves presented a “hygienic” laboratory-like appearance and was easier to clean than uncoated cast iron, which had to be frequently coated with blacking to prevent rust. Quick Meal stove advertising claimed, “They drive drudgery from the kitchen and make happy homes. They are a boon to womankind. THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE!”

Missouri History Museum Collections

Rabbit-Fur Hat

Many people are aware that St. Louis once had a thriving garment district, but they often don’t realize how extensive it was. During the period between 1890 and 1920, the production of hats was of great importance to women, in terms of both fashion and economics. And during that time, St. Louis was the millinery giant of the state. It housed some of the largest manufacturing, importing, and wholesale millinery houses in the country, second only to New York. By 1915 the industry was doing a business volume of over $10 million.

While many women used extravagant hats as a way to show off their social status, for other women the field of millinery was a source of income. Working as a milliner (whether independently or as part of a company) was considered one of the few socially acceptable jobs for women. This particular hat was sold by the R. F. Rosenheim Millinery and Toggery Shop around 1910, just one of the more than 100 milliners in St. Louis at that time. Retail shops like Rosenheim generally purchased their hats from wholesale houses that employed large numbers of women both year round and seasonally to work in a mass-production setting, each making a different part of the hat.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Romper Room

Those words may sound like gibberish—that is, unless you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. If you were a kid then, they mean fun and learning. They mean Miss Lois and Magic Mirror. They mean Romper Room.

Romper Room, a children’s show designed to teach kids manners and the social skills they needed before starting kindergarten, originated in Baltimore in 1954. When the show began syndicating to new markets, television stations could choose to produce their own versions of Romper Room. Each locally produced show had a different host but kept some of the regular characters such as Do Bee and Don’t Bee and segments such as “Magic Mirror” and “Tell a Story Time.”

From 1962 to 1974, the St. Louis host of Romper Room on KTVI was Miss Lois. The show made her a beloved local figure: Thousands of children came to Miss Lois’s public appearances, and the waiting list to be a guest on the show was years long. And today just the mention of Romper Room or Miss Lois will turn St. Louisans of a certain age into kids again. The clip featured here comes from Miss Lois’s final episode.

Gift of Mrs. Lois Ritt

Sagar Suitcase

Imagine if your entire life had to fit in a single suitcase. Dr. Satya Sagar emigrated from India to Toledo, Ohio, in 1963, carrying only what could fit in this bright orange suitcase. He came to St. Louis in 1971, where he and his wife, Sudha, built careers practicing medicine. The suitcase that once contained Dr. Sagar’s entire life belongings stayed with the family, being repurposed to hold “old sheets, new towels,” as is written on it in marker.

Throughout its history St. Louis has been changed by countless immigrants arriving in search of a new beginning, often in large waves. By 1850, about 43 percent of St. Louisans had been born in either Germany or Ireland. Chinese immigrants congregated downtown in Hop Alley for nearly a century, and laborers in St. Louis’s clay mines created the Italian and Irish enclaves. The Bosnian War of the 1990s brought thousands of refugees to St. Louis’s Bevo Mill neighborhood, now the largest Bosnian concentration outside of Europe.

Dr. Sagar’s story, of leaving everything behind to build a new life out of a single suitcase, is one thousands of immigrants have shared. Some have come by choice, and some have come by need. No matter their circumstances, the uncertainty, hope, and sacrifice immigrants face can be universally summed up in one suitcase.

Gift of Satya and Sudha Sagar

Saloon in a Bottle

The Leonhardt Maier saloon at 3200 Shenandoah Avenue in south St. Louis was a neighborhood tavern. Except for Leonhardt’s wife, Christine, who cooked salty lunch food to encourage beer purchases, it was mostly a male bastion. Into this tavern in 1908 came a drifter and itinerant craftsman, a German immigrant named Carl Worner. He was able to support his wanderlust and footloose lifestyle by creating dozens of bottles like this one, mostly in the Midwest. Whittling was a traditional men’s hobby and pastime that Worner turned into a marketable skill. He bartered his handcrafted scenes for food and drinks.

When Worner arrived in a new location, he would call for a large bottle and cigar boxes or other scrap wood, a hatpin, and glue. In less than a day he would produce a scene with painted figures, sometimes personalized to a specific place. This bottle shows a keg of Klausmann’s beer, a St. Louis brew. It is also the only known Worner bottle to feature an African American figure, the waiter carving the ham. Although best known for saloon bottles like this one, Worner also made scenes of other contemporary businesses, including a bakery and a shoe repair shop, as well as religious scenes.

Gift of Charlotte Simon

Scissor Cart

Many St. Louisans who grew up on the city’s south side between the 1920s and 1983 have fond memories of this grinder cart and its owner, Anthony Gagliarducci. An Italian immigrant, Gagliarducci worked as a dishwasher in his brother’s restaurant until he bought his first grinder cart and started his tool-sharpening business in the 1920s. He pushed this 250-pound handmade cart through St. Louis streets 25–30 miles a day, often on routes that took two weeks to complete. Instead of dragging the cart home every night, Gagliarducci would store it in a garage or at a friend’s house and return home by bus. The work was hard, and Gagliarducci wore out the heels on his shoes every two weeks. During the 60-plus years he sharpened tools, he went through three grinder carts.

Gagliarducci’s work, though, made him something of a local celebrity. He recalled crowds watching him work and friends, wherever he went, offering him a cold beer for refreshment. Generations recognized his arrival by the ring of the cart’s bells as Gagliarducci struck them with a hammer. Today, when people reminisce of the “good old days growing up in St. Louis,” many fondly remember the sound of those bells ringing as Gagliarducci made his way around the city.

Gift of Anthony Gagliarducci

St. Louis City Flag

This city flag didn’t always adorn the flagpoles and front porches of proud St. Louisans. In fact, it isn’t even the first flag the city had. The first flag’s design was the result of a contest that started in 1915, with a prize of $100. A year later, A. P. Woehrle’s design was declared the winner. It featured a centered silhouette of King Louis IX, the city’s namesake, over three wide horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue and four stars symbolizing the city’s status as the nation’s fourth-largest city.

As time passed, citizens grew tired of this flag. Many wanted a new city banner, one that was more distinct and instantly recognizable. So, in the 1960s, the city brought in Yale art professor Theodore Sizer to design the flag St. Louisans have come to know and proudly display. The blue lines represent the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The center medallion represents the Louisiana Purchase, and the fleur-de-lis, the city’s French heritage. The colors signify the various countries associated with the city: Spain, France, and the United States. St. Louis’s flag was adopted February 3, 1964. It was nationally recognized in 2004 when it was named one of the five best city flags in the United States.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Steamboat Elvira’s Roof Bell

From 1851 to 1863, the roof bell of the Elvira rang out from the upper deck, announcing the ship’s arrival in port. It was one of more than 100 steamboats that moored daily at the mile-long St. Louis levee, then the second-largest port in the nation. In the mid-19th century, steamboats provided one of the main ways to journey long distances in the United States, and St. Louis was a major frontier city through which many people and goods traveled.

Every two to three days, the Elvira steamed up the Mississippi from its landing at St. Louis to the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. From there, it chugged up the western branch to landings along the Missouri River. Named after the daughter of its owner, the boat ran back and forth for years in service to James Dozier and his Arrow Rock Packet Company, carrying both travelers and merchants’ cargo. The owners later changed, but the Elvira had enjoyed more than twice the typical life span of a steamboat by the time it sank on a submerged tree snag while running supplies for the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

Gift of Arthur M. Branch, Jr., Memorial Fund

Suffrage Banner

Women did not win the national right to vote until 1920, but they had been fighting for it for decades. In St. Louis, 10 female members of the Wednesday Club met in 1910 to talk about women’s suffrage. That meeting compelled others to join the cause, and the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League was formed on April 10, 1910. Fifty women attended the first meeting.

This banner was likely carried in a suffrage parade held in St. Louis on September 30, 1913. Thirty cars lined the procession down the city streets with a band playing patriotic music and banners waving. One of St. Louis’s biggest demonstrations for suffrage came when the Democratic Party was in town in 1916 for its national convention. Activists held a “walkless parade” where women dressed in yellow and stood shoulder to shoulder from the Jefferson Hotel to the Coliseum on Locust. This “Golden Lane” earned national headlines for the suffragists and their mission.

Their efforts—and those of earlier activists—were rewarded on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified and women across the country were given the right to vote.

Gift of the St. Louis League of Women Voters

Tall-Case Clock

Immigration to America often required making heartbreaking choices about what to bring and what to leave behind. This tall-case clock tells us about some of those choices, and the new lives that immigrants made. The hood of this tall-case clock was made in Germany in the late 1700s. It is likely that the immigrant couple who owned the clock brought only the hood and works and had the base made in Missouri upon their arrival. If you look closely at the clock, you may be able to see that the base is made of a different wood (oak, not the fruitwood of the hood) and does not have the elaborate inlaid wood banding surrounding the clock face.

A clue to the clock’s owners is a circular piece of paper inside the hood handwritten in German: “the married pair Ruetgerus Ruettgers and Margarethe Radmacher, both by birth from Europe 1839.” Perhaps the clock was a wedding gift, which the couple took with them to settle in their new home in Missouri. The clock hood would be a memento of their homeland for the immigrant couple, and the clock itself would be useful in their new home. The clock, with its German works and hood and Missouri-made base, is a powerful symbol of the merging of aspects of German immigrant culture with local craftsmanship.

Missouri History Museum Collections

Ted Drewes Uniform

One of the many joys of living in St. Louis is getting frozen custard at Ted Drewes. Even on the most sweltering summer nights, long lines of people wait for a taste of the delicious frozen treat. Going to Ted Drewes is a ritual for many families, one that dates back to the 1930s when the first location opened on Natural Bridge Avenue in St. Louis. The location on Chippewa Street (the old Route 66) that most St. Louisans know so well was the last location to open, in 1941. The Chippewa and South Grand locations are the only remaining stores.

Today the male and female employees behind the counter all wear a yellow Ted Drewes T-shirt, but in the 1970s the uniform was a little more formal. Former employee Lois Miklas wore this uniform when she worked as a carhop during her summer breaks in the 1970s. While the company supplied the turquoise tunics and a white knit sash, young women supplied their own white pants.

Gift of Lois Miklas

The Chase "C"

The Chase Hotel has been an eyewitness to much of St. Louis’s history within the last century. Built by Chase Ulman, it opened its doors September 29, 1922. The nine-story hotel, located on Kingshighway Boulevard, originally featured 500 rooms. In the 1920s there were Prohibition raids at the hotel. In 1929 Sam Koplar built the 28-story Park Plaza Hotel adjacent to the Chase, and after the Chase struggled following the Depression and numerous ownership changes, the two hotels merged to become the Chase-Park Plaza in 1947.

The facility has since hosted eight presidents. Celebrity guests have included Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, Perry Como, the Rolling Stones, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and many sports figures. In 1956 the Chase hosted the Miss America contest, and professional wrestling matches were held every Saturday in the 1960s and ’70s. The Chase would have welcomed even more famous guests but a “whites only” policy for much of its history prevented black athletes and entertainers from staying at the hotel. The hotel’s Khorassan Room was the site of the Veiled Prophet Ball for years.

By 1982 Koplar had sold the hotel, and the Park Plaza became an apartment complex. Within a few years the Chase began to struggle, and it closed September 22, 1989. Investors recognized the Chase’s place in St. Louis history and renovated and reopened it in 1999. It is listed today on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gift of Chase Hotel Redevelopment Corporation

TWA Hostess Uniform

Talk about cabin pressure. For many years, the women who wore uniforms like this one were the public face of TWA, which used St. Louis as a headquarters and a hub during its time as one of the country’s biggest airlines. As hostesses, these women dealt with passenger requests, as well as everything from foreign language translation to childcare. The uniforms they wore were designed to be feminine and match the interiors of the jetliners, and yet be comfortable and adaptable to flight functions. But the pressures of the job didn’t bother many of these women. For June Killion Fangmann, the former hostess who owned this uniform and worked for TWA between 1959 and 1962 and again during a strike in 1986, working for the airline provided her with wonderful memories and a lasting camaraderie between hostesses that she described as a kind of sorority.

St. Louis served as one of TWA’s two national hubs during much of the 20th century, but TWA’s dominance as one of the four major airlines was not to last. In 2001, American Airlines bought out TWA. Since then, St. Louis has had difficulty retaining its status as a major airline hub.

Gift of June Fangmann

Vashon Memorial

John Boyer Vashon’s untimely death in 1924 amplified the call to name the city’s second black high school in his honor. Vashon was a respected educator who was a member of one of the most celebrated families of 19th- and early 20th-century America. His parents, George and Susan Vashon, were native New Englanders and noted anti-slavery activists. George Vashon went on to distinguish himself as a linguist, mathematician, and lawyer. Likewise, Susan Vashon was a woman of national prominence who gained recognition for her work in the women’s club movement.

Susan Vashon and her four children moved to St. Louis in 1882 following the death of George, who had been teaching at a college in Mississippi. The move was fortuitous for the city as the Vashons continued in their roles as activists and reformers. John B. Vashon was instrumental in establishing a YMCA branch for blacks and spent his entire 34-year career as a teacher and administrator advancing the cause of public education for African Americans.

In 1927, three years after his death, Vashon opened as an intermediate and high school for blacks bearing the name of father and son, George B. and John B. Vashon. In truth, it was a tribute to the entire Vashon family and their decades of service to the city and the nation.

Gift of Cozy Marks

Veiled Prophet Queen Dress

When the Veiled Prophet named 16-year-old Susie Slayback “Belle of the Ball” in 1878, Slayback probably couldn’t have imagined that the tradition would be continuing more than 100 years later. The Veiled Prophet organization changed the queen’s title to the “Queen of Love and Beauty” in 1894, but St. Louisans’ interest in the event never waned. For many years, newspapers (and later television) captured the pageantry and formality of the debutante ball, providing curious St. Louisans details about the queen and her one-of-a-kind dress. Over time, people might have forgotten the names of the queens, but they never forgot the two dress designers who designed their exquisite gowns.

Beginning in 1902, a Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney custom designer named Samuel Harbison created many of the spectacular dresses worn by the queens and special maids. Harbison was credited with maintaining the formality of the court dress, and many considered him the master of the VP gown for more than 40 years. In 1948, a young designer and dressmaker named Vera Hicks followed in his footsteps by creating her own masterpieces for the ball. While Harbison was known for his elaborate jewels and sequins, Hicks based her designs on a model of simplicity. This dress worn by VP Queen Helen Dozier Conant in 1948 is an excellent example of Hicks’s refined and elegant work.

Gift of Mrs. Stuart Carothers

Walking Plow

Though St. Louis City and County were politically separated in 1876, they have remained closely linked through agriculture, industry, and commerce. In the 1850s, brothers Julius and George Mincke cleared timber from their land along the Meramec River, near Sherman in what is today west St. Louis County. Their sawmill prepared boards later sold at their 14th Street lumberyard in the city of St. Louis. Many regional industries developed in this same way, harvesting resources from the land and turning them into goods to sell in the urban marketplace.

Julius’s son, Henry, farmed with this plow beginning in the late 1800s and into the 20th century, after inheriting his father and uncle’s cleared river bottom land. Draft animals, guided by the farmer, pulled the plow back and forth across fields, breaking soil and old roots and making furrows to plant seeds for crops.

By 1870, there were more than 9,000 horses and mules and nearly 3,000 farms in St. Louis County. The total value of St. Louis’s farms was more than double that of any other county in the state. The important role of agriculture in St. Louis is underscored by the image of a walking plow like this one on the county’s official seal.

Gift of St. Louis County Parks and Recreation Department

Wooden Plow Plane

St. Louis grew from a frontier fur-trading post of only a few hundred people at the end of the 1700s into a bustling community of 77,860 by the mid-1800s. As the city grew, it developed into the commercial center of the West. More and more goods were produced locally instead of being brought here from eastern manufacturing centers. Companies made everything from tools used that built cities and towns to steamboats that transported people and goods on the waterways. Using local resources and talent, companies furnished many tools like this plane that helped build St. Louis in the early 1800s.

Charles Henry Meyer, one of the many craftsmen in the growing community, used this wooden adjustable plow plane and other tools to shape trim and molding for steamboats constructed at riverfront shipyards. As Meyer pushed the plane along a board’s surface, the chisel-like iron sticking out through the bottom cut away thin slivers of wood, shaping it more with each pass. Using the locally produced plane to shape these steamboat parts, Meyer and other local artisans made significant contributions to St. Louis’s status as a major frontier city.

Gift of Stanley Lienhop

World's Fair Bench

Sitting down was not the first thing on the minds of visitors to the 1904 World’s Fair. They probably wanted to experience the rides and attractions on the Pike or visit the ornate cultural palaces or watch the Cascade fountains flow into the Grand Basin. But after a few hours of walking and sightseeing, many were ready for a rest.

The fairgrounds were enormous, stretching out over 1,240 acres. The eastern border of the fairgrounds stood near where the History Museum is today, and the western edge extended to Big Bend Boulevard—a little over two miles. The fairgrounds were also a mile wide. And while there were other ways to get around—including buggies, guided roller-chair tours, and an intramural railway—walking was the main method of travel for most visitors.

This terra-cotta bench once sat on the grounds of the British Pavilion at the 1904 World’s Fair. The pavilion was located on the Washington University campus, where the Kemper Art Museum and Bixby Hall stand today. A sunken garden surrounded the red brick pavilion, offering benches like this one on which visitors could rest and enjoy the view.